My life works best when my thought is straight. I think every average Joe understands this simple truth. But today I’d like to take this idea several steps further and consider that all existence, all action, all things spring from our thinking.
Think negative thoughts; we get negative results. One of my deepest beliefs in life is that the good I do equals the good I receive. So I do know that all that I do in life starts first and evolves from thought, from my thinking.
When things start to go bad, I’ve learned to not try to change the things, but to change my thinking. When I do this, when I clarify my thinking, the things in my life change because they were always the result of my thinking anyway. Eliminate the cause and you also eliminate the effect.
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” – Buddha
I go so far as to say that even disease and accidents are the results of our thinking. I see cancer as pockets of negative thought collected and not corrected in the course of our lives. These pockets of rotten thought eat away at us and if not corrected in thought can do great damage. Accidents come when our thought is not protected and held to a high standard.
Want to heal cancer? Heal cancerous thought.
If we stand at the door of thought and usher in only that which is high minded, positive, loving and pure, we will live wise, healthy and noble lives. If we lose control of our thought and do not manage it, but let it manage us, then we fill our lives with depression, danger and disease.
It is our choice.
“The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” – Albert Einstein
So if you have aspirations, spend every waking moment aspiring. If you have dreams, dream your dream and hold onto the thoughts that support those dreams. Admit no thoughts contrary to the dream, to the aspiration.
This is not easy. Often we have to bar the door of thought and even nail it shut. World thought, the negativity coming at us every day through the various media, sneaks in the windows and the cracks around the door. It takes a mighty effort to seal these fatal openings shut, but it can be done and we can control our lives by a 24/7 moment-to-moment all-out effort to take a hold of our own thought and keep it on track to better lives.
The work is arduous, but the result is mighty. And the better you get, the easier it becomes.
That’s a promise.
“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force – that thoughts rule the world.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Brilliant article Peter and so true – and yet so hard to do without a way of thinking, a formulae.
Try this on: the “ABC of D” (D = what you do, or how you behave as a result of the A).
Something happens outside of you (an A, or Activating event). It upsets you (causes a feeling – it could be any emotion, anger, joy, sadness, etc etc) and you believe that ‘it,’ the A, is responsible for how you are feeling (for the C – the Cause of your upset/ emotion/ feeling). . .example “You make me so mad!”
But NO, that’s not how it ‘goes.’
YOU were the cause of your upset/emotion/feeling.
“That’s bull,” you say, or, “How come” you ask?
Because you forgot about the filter – the B. The B is your Perception of the external (activating) event and your perception is 100% based on your Beliefs which most likely are subconsciously, for the most part at least, causing your perception or assessment (bad, good, neutral, threatening, saddening etc etc).
Yet, that’s not where it ends!
Remember the D.
The A just triggered your B, and your B caused or triggered you to Feel a certain way (the C), and now your thoughts and feelings inspire you to “Do” something, or behave in a certain way.
So, for clarity, the A did not cause you to feel a certain way. It is your Belief about the A that did it to you.
The great news, although you might have no or very little control over the Activating Event, you do have full control over how you respond; yet, only if you consciously follow Peter Links brilliant advice and recognize that the A did not case the C and make you do the D..
Many thanks, Werner, for a great lesson on my ABCs. Most helpful!